A new drug for malaria patients who are resistant to conventional treatments could help fight the disease, which is rampant in the developing world. An antibiotic was shown in laboratory tests to attack the parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which lives in mosquitoes and is passed on to humans through insect bites. Malaria kills at least one million people, mostly children, and causes 300 million cases of acute illness every year. But many people are becoming immune to treatments as increasing numbers of anti-malaria drugs are prescribed. The disease is a major health problem in India as in most of the tropics and subtropics. About 40 per cent of the world's population mostly those living in the world's poorest countries are at risk of malaria. Scientists at the University of Tubingen gave the antibiotic fosmidomycin to sufferers in Gabon, West Africa. Fosmidomycin is a phosphonic acid derivative, which blocks a key enzyme in the apicoplast of Plasmodium falciparum, thereby inhibiting the growth of the multidrug-resistant virus in vitro. The drug was well tolerated and cure rates after two weeks were between 60 per cent and 89 per cent. The parasites were rapidly destroyed and fever quickly brought down. This data suggests that fosmidomycin is a safe and effective treatment for malaria if given for four days or more. Further studies on combinations of fosmidomycin with other anti- malarial drugs are needed to assess its safety and efficacy in children and to boost efficacy while benefiting from a shorter and simpler treatment regime.

The Lancet December 2002, Vol. 360 (9349)